Wow! I’m NOT good at judging how fast my ladies work. I inspected both hives this afternoon–and made a trip to Bailey Bee Supply for more supers to put on the hives and some the basic paraphernalia need for my first honey extraction. I need only worry about the small stuff–the Durham County Beekeepers Association, our local bee club, has an extractor that I can rent–and I’ll pick that up on Sunday.

I’ve put the escape screen on the hive to let the bees out of the honey super, but not let them get back in. In a couple days, I’ll go back and remove the super with the honey and do the extraction.

Much to my chagrin, I discovered that I have brood and pollen stored in the super that was intended for cut-comb honey. The bees had virtually propolized the queen excluder closed so I, in my “newbee” wisdom, removed it.  Seems that ladies didn’t think that they had room enough to raise brood. So–now to figure out what to do about that. Looking at the number of frames that they have already drawn, I suspect that just became a brood box at least until later this fall. Next time around, I’ll know to keep the queen excluder on.

This morning (24 June 2016) I put a new honey super on Salvia–I’ve set my beekeeping software (Hive Tracks) to remind me to check in no more than a week to see what progress the bees have made on that new super.